When considering a new solution to add to your company portfolio, the top items to consider are “What are the benefits and return on investment this solution will bring to my organization?” Here we will discuss the benefits of a professional knowledge base.Customer experience is still a fairly new concept in the business world, but its importance in the success of a business has already proven to be profound. It is a lot cheaper for a business to retain its existing clients than it is to acquire new clients. The easiest way to retain your existing clients is by consistently providing them with a great customer experience at each and every touch point. One of the best ways to ensure this is by having a strong foundation to your customer service experience. A professional knowledge base is a foundation you need to provide a positive customer experience with each and every client-business interaction. Below we go over the top benefits your company will realize by implementing a knowledge base.
First off, let’s define what is a knowledge base? A knowledge base is a platform designed to centralize and house all of your organizational information. Employees can then access the knowledge base to easily retrieve information on your business. A knowledge base is intended to be your business’s own personal “Google.” Having a knowledge base will equip your employees with the knowledge they need to consistently provide a tremendous service experience to your customers.
One of the main benefits of implementing a knowledge base is that it will improve your contact center productivity. By centralizing your knowledge into one easily accessible location, your agents will be able to find the answers they need as quickly as possible. This will allow your agents to answer inquiries faster, resolve phone calls quicker, and have more time to handle more complex inquiries. In turn, your customers will get a prompt answer to their questions and this will lead to a positive service experience with your business.
Another benefit to implementing a knowledge base is that it helps to drastically reduce your agent training and on-boarding times. Some professional knowledge bases allow you to create decision tree documents for your agents. These decision trees or “call flows” walk your agents step-by-step through a phone call, guiding them through even the most complex questions. These documents have proven to drastically reduce training times and enable your agents to get on the phones faster and with more confidence. Some knowledge bases even have an incorporated E-learning module. With the E-learning module you are able to create E-learning courses and build out tests which can be used to on-board and continuously train your agents.
A knowledge base can also be used to help your business generate more revenue. In many instances, a customer service call can turn into an upsell opportunity for your business. By including upsell information within your knowledge base documents, agents can relay this information to your customer on the phone and help to provide a solution to your customer while also bringing more business to your company.
In many instances if you call into a customer service desk and you talk to agent “A” and agent “B” and ask them the same exact question, you might receive a different answer. This causes frustration on your customer’s end and causes confusion among your agents on which answer is actually correct. By using a knowledge base, agents are able to look
up a question in the knowledge base, find the right answer, and therefore relay that same answer onto the customer. Achieving a uniform response quality is a highly important piece of your customer experience.
Nothing makes a customer happier than a quick fix. According to the SQM Group, “for every 1% improvement in the First Call Resolution Rate, you get a 1% improvement in customer satisfaction.” One of the best and quickest ways to improve your First Call Resolution Rate and Overall Resolution time is by having a knowledge base. A knowledge base puts all of the information your agent needs directly at their fingertips. In doing so, an agent is able to find the answer they need and relay that onto the customer as quickly as possible. Without a knowledge base, precious time can be wasted searching for the answer in multiple databases, asking multiple colleagues for the answer, or having to transfer the call to another agent.
Another benefit of a professional knowledge base is the ability to maintain documents easier. This is extremely important for keeping your documents relevant and up-to-date. If your documentation is out-of-date, it will not be useful to your agents or your customers. Maintaining the quality of your documents can be a time consuming and painstaking process if you do not have the right method in place. Most professional knowledge bases have a built in process for helping you maintain your documents relevance. Maintaining your documents is also critical to make sure you are capturing all of the knowledge within your business for future use. Just imagine if your most tenured agent who has been working at your business for 20 years was to leave your organization. 20 years’ worth of knowledge acquired by that agent about your business would leave with them. Unless you capture their knowledge within articles in your knowledge base. This way your current and future agents can continue to use that information attained by your 20 year agent, helping with the continued success of your business.
Having a knowledge base also helps your business to reduce costs. By implementing a knowledge base correctly, your business should realize profound benefits like an increase in agent productivity, faster call resolutions, a reduction in training time, etc. Each of these metrics involve time and resources. By helping to improve these metrics with a knowledge base, we are able to reduce time and resources, therefore saving you money.
Delivering an exceptional customer experience will help you to acquire and retain clients. In today’s business world, you are expected to serve your customers throughout multiple channels and deliver a pleasant experience through each touchpoint. Having a knowledge base and enabling agents with the information they need about your business will help your agents to provide a positive experience at each and every interaction with your customer.
The knowledge base is the foundation to all of your customer experiences. It is the wheelhouse of information your agents need to provide an excellent customer interaction. By implementing a knowledge base you are setting the groundwork for delivering better overall service to your customers and realizing all of the benefits mentioned above for your organization.